Monday, January 21, 2008

Musings

Thank you for the compliment on the baby outfit, Susan. The receipient loved it and I sincerely hope I can knit something else if I ever have to do anymore shower presents. (Actually, I am knitting something else for a shower present but it, too, is a pattern I've done before.) I tend to choose to re-knit based on usually needing the item quickly, so I choose a pattern I've done before, which allows me to be quicker about it. I can be quicker because I've already noted any errata, I know what how it turned out with the fiber I chose before and I can sub in details easily due to having an idea if they'll work with the basic pattern without having to do a whole lot of math and graphing it out. I have tons of patterns I'd like to do but I just keep putting doing them off and then the baby (babies) concerned do like all babies and grow like weeds.

Alison, I'm totally flattered you like my socks after seeing your lacework! (I also get to tell all my friends that Alison, who, by the way, happens to have a great lace book published, commented on my blog.) I don't get to have the fun of wearing Birkies all year 'round since I'm in the mountains of VA and it was 11 degrees F last night but I do love my Crocs. Especially the fleece-lined ones. I love the Fleece Artist Merino sock yarn but it does felt the sole areas where they make contact with the Crocs. I don't mind since I know better felted than worn through but that might give someone else pause if they didn't realize this would happen. I also love my Crocs with my hand-knit socks because, for some unknown reason, they allow me to stand for longer periods without pain, something that has been an increasing problem with the RA. I can do better if I move about but I can't stand still so shopping lines are (pardon the pun) a total pain.

I realized the other day that while I had updated my Ravelry page (HokieKnitter there), I had failed to do so on my blog. Bad blogger. I had not shown you how the Rogue hoodie turned out when Tech Gal finally got to put it on for the first time:

Hmm, I had 2 more photos to show you, close-ups of the side cabling and the cuff inset cable but Blogger is refusing to cooperate. Maybe it will feel better tomorrow about letting me post those.

I've been very good since the last of September, 2007 about working faithfully on being project-monogamous. I had to be in order to finish up my Christmas presents. However, it now seems to have resulted in a slingshot effect and I'm having terrible pangs of startitis. I need to finish the Noni bag, which is half-done and wouldn't take a couple of days; the baby sweater set, which, help me Knitting-Powers-That-Be, really ought to be done by Friday so it could go with the grandma-to-be to the baby shower (the squeaking of the yarn is still really getting to me plus I managed to do the neck shaping at the sleeve edges instead of the neck edges and it's been in time-out for the weekend); and last but not least, the socks for my mom's birthday.

Instead, I picked Mystery Stole 3 back up from where it's lain neglected since August and managed to complete the first chart of clue 4 in a week. Yes, I know that's slow for some but I am a slow lace-knitter. I'm a slow knitter in general. But I have gotten excited about MS3 again and find I really, really want to finish it and love it and forget the other stuff.

Except...I seem to have started a sweater in RYC Soft Tweed that Evelyn, my lovely weaving mentor, left lying in plain sight with a "buy me" option on it. Dangling Rowan or RYC in front of me is like tempting an addict and had the unfortunate result of my coming home with 2 bags of the stuff. Yes, that's bags, not skeins. It's already been swatched and a plain, cozy, gartered welt knitted and the first few rows of the body started. I'm waffling about the sweater design though because I keep thinking how great a shawl this would make woven. This impulse was aided by the 11 F weather here. It's much easier to cast on that soft, warm, fluffy yarn for a quickie sweater (or warp it up for a nice shawl) when your husband keeps turning the furnace down everytime you turn your back. We fight this central furnace issue all year round--in the winter, he turns the thermostat down, I turn it up. In the summer, he turns it up, I turn it down. Do you think we'll ever arrive at the point we have the same temperature comfort zone?

I also swatched for the Ethnic Knitting Discovery KAL but am not pleased with the results and am down-hearted and not enthused about this at the moment. This is not due to the project involved but to the gorgeous swatches being posted by others and my lack of decision about exactly what colors and motifs I want to use for my Norwegian headband/sweater. So, to comfort myself about that, I pulled out sock yarn and needles but stopped myself from casting on by staring fixedly at my mom's socks and telling myself I really ought to finish them first. But I really need a pair of socks with green in them. Honest.

I think a proposed trip to Mosaic on this coming Friday might help the Norwegian sweater issue. One of my problems has been not having the right combination of colors on hand. I have some beautiful Berroco Ultra Alpaca on hand but first, I don't have light colors to add the necessary contrast. Second, a colorwork sweater out of worsted weight alpaca is going to be really, really toasty. Really. So I think I should opt to make something else out of this. Maybe it should be woven. If I can talk Evelyn into the loan of a floor loom, that is.

And to add to my wallowing in wanting to start this and this and that...I ended up going through a bunch of my pattern books and stitch dictionaries and magazines last night under the guise of searching for motifs I'd like but we all know I was using this as a front for scoping out yet more projects to cast on. So, in the end, I finished up the evening having knit extremely little beyond the rows I'd done earlier on MS3. So am I having a knitter's block, procrastinating, or infected with startitis?

Ollie says he could care less.

Please, click on him to get a close-up of the narrowed yellow eyes, which totally convey his disdain for the world in general. Mr. King-Wherever-I-May-Sit, whether it's a throne or simply the scrap lumber to build one. Evil cat.

5 comments:

When I was a teenager, my mom knitted a sweater very similar to Rogue for my little sister. Somehow, I couldn't convince her she really wanted to knit a second one just like it for me; she told me to go knit it myself. So I guess you could say it's been on my to-do list for oh goodness, 34 years now!

Yours is beautiful! I can just see my sister snickering. And I bet she still fits in hers, too.

Of course I clicked on Ollie. And now I've got him on my desktop so that he can disdain me too. I'm a bit disappointed with my fleece-lined crocs because they didn't deepen the heel to accommodate the fleece so they make me feel a little as if I'm tipping forward - not enough to stop me wearing them completely but enough that I can't wear them outdoors, and I do go back to my regular ones with a sigh of relief. But the fleece is delicious.

I wouldn't worry about whether it's startitis or procrastination; I think you're just having a bit of a knitter's wallow and you will return to the fray in a more focused manner soon enough. The Rogue looks fab.